


ouroboros

by doctortwelfth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), clintasha friendship, mild spoilers for a4 trailer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 21:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16920633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctortwelfth/pseuds/doctortwelfth
Summary: They've come the full circle now. It’s not absolution, but it’s a start.





	ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> i've been kind of Not Great these past few months,, but i did write something in half an hour based on the new avengers: endgame trailer (instead of working on the drafts languishing in my drive) 
> 
> there's one small implication of self-harm in here but it's not super explicit because i like to talk around things in weird metaphors. also, i know nothing about nat's past and how the timelines fit together so i'm sorry if anything is off here!
> 
> russian translation [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/7831575), thank you Nevedomka !!

It’s raining when she sees him, and oh, isn’t that fitting, because the first time he’d found her it had been in the middle of a thunderstorm with blood and rain streaking down her face like tears. He’s facing away from her, a solid shadow in the middle of the street. The new armor is dark enough that she wouldn’t be able to tell if there was blood on it even if she tried. 

Natasha is afraid of him. But she knows that he is, too, constantly; they’re both monsters. Love doesn’t tame monsters, it just gives them a reason to stop killing. They both know what the other is capable of. 

She allows herself one breath, then another. Her hands rest on the blades at her hip. “Hawkeye,” she says. 

The figure doesn’t turn around. “You got the name wrong,” he tells her in an emotionless voice. 

“So Hawkeye is dead,” she muses. “But I know Clint Barton isn’t.”

There’s a bitter laugh, something horrible and broken that she doesn’t ever want to hear from this particular person again. “Don’t talk to me about identities, Natalia Alianovna.” 

She sets her jaw. “Natalia Alianovna died when I left Moscow.” They can both be manipulative when they want to be. 

“And Clint Barton did when his family turned to ashes around him.” He walks away from Natasha, refusing to even turn around and see her face. The last memory of him she has still aches, enemies turned to friends turned to enemies as the Avengers fought at the airport. “Don’t follow me.” The phrase drifts back with the wind above the slowing downpour of rain. 

They say the Black Widow is heartless, and sometimes they are correct. But right now, with the grief still fresh everywhere she looks (Steve’s eyes, Bruce and Thor wandering the compound, the emptiness on Tony’s floor—that’s all that’s left of the people who were supposed to protect Earth), she cannot bring herself to be heartless about the loss of his family. Her family. 

Laura, gentle hands. She’d bandaged Nat up after a mission, once, not even understanding why she was hurt but wanting to mend the pain anyway. Cooper and Lila, too young. Just too young. Nathaniel, proof that Natasha had been loved by people other than those who did out of obligation. All of them, gone.

Maybe it’s true that a black widow will always murder those she loves best.

* * *

She catches up to him again, soon. It’s easy to track people when they want to be found.

He’s facing her, this time, and the expression on his face is hard. “Natasha,” he says, nodding. “I thought I told you to not come near me.”

_ “Don’t come near me,” she’d told him, in a low voice with a mask hiding her face, because men always seemed to take her more seriously when the figure in front of them was not as glaringly feminine. “You have thirty seconds to vacate the area before I detonate the device I’m carrying right now.” _

_ “If you detonate that, you’ll kill yourself along with it.” He’s armed, with a bow in hand and arrows strapped to his uniform, but his expression seems genuinely curious.  _

_ “And what makes you think that’s not what I want?” _

_ She’d been younger then, just escaped from the Red Room and angry, so full of white-hot rage that it was a miracle she hadn’t been killed for it. Angry about her sisters, angry about their deaths, angry about the life that little Natalia never got to have. And really, there was no one to turn all that rage against but herself; Natasha still has the scars to show for it. Bad dreams were not the only things that kept her up at night.  _

He’d seen straight through that bluff for what it was. He’d known how to coax her away from self-destruction. She hopes she’s making the right decision when she says, “It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was Thanos’ fault.”

“We’re going to kill him, you know that, right?” She unsheathes a blade and lets some of that familiar rage show in the animal gleam of her teeth. The blade balances precariously on the tip of her index finger. 

“Is that why you want me back?” A bead of water trickles down his forehead, down the corner of his eye. One might almost think he was crying in the hazy light of the streetlamps. 

“You’d be safer with us.” It’s almost an answer, but they can both see the obvious flaw in it. 

“Safe didn’t protect my family when it mattered.” With that, he turns, as if to leave again, and she can’t let that happen. She needs him to stay, for bone-deep reasons that have little to do with defeating Thanos and more to do with a kind of protective, instinctive emotion that she doesn’t want to examine too closely. 

“You rescued me from that street in Budapest.”

“We’re nine thousand kilometers away from Budapest, Tasha,” he says wearily, but she can tell he’s softening. She swallows. Puts the knife away. Lets herself pray to a god that she isn’t sure exists anymore. 

“Good. So we’re on the other side of the world and now I’m the one saving you. There’s something symbolic about that, I’m sure.”

“The real world isn’t all neat and pretty like that.”

She gives him a look. He knows that Natasha, of all people, doesn’t need reminding of that. “I told you that once, and you said that’s why heroes exist.” She pauses. “Come back with me, Clint. You’re much better at being a hero than me, anyway.” 

Natasha Romanoff holds out a hand in a rain-soaked street in rural Japan, and surprisingly enough, the man who was once Hawkeye takes it. It’s not absolution, but it’s a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @doctortwelfth


End file.
